Web2.0 Distracts Good Design

Hitesh Mehta's reaction on Jakob Nielsen's talk on BBC : " Web2.0 - Distracts Good Design "

He warned that the rush to make webpages more dynamic often meant users were badly served.

Today, the dynamic web pages are not made in any rush hour, plenty of man hours goes in to research and a lot of effort is being put in by the group of experts to make the NEXT web2.0 product / web site totally user-friendly and easy going with the millions of users on the web.

Experts from various streams like research analyst, hardcore technical guys, business development managers, investors, Artificial Intelligence experts, SEO specialists and many others are today extremely involved in making a successful web2.0 product.

He said sites peppered with personalisation tools were in danger of resembling the “glossy but useless” sites at the height of the dotcom boom.

Research into website use shows that sites were better off getting the basics right, said Mr Nielsen.

Web2.0 does not start or end with Glossy sites. Making your web2.0 powered website does not require any glossy buttons and interface. The designers today should not confuse themselves by looking at the web2.0 sites and feeling that adding a gloss button would categorize their website under web2.0.

Personalization tool, in fact this is what the USP of any web2.0 site is, how effectively you get your information and fantastic use of technology from your desktop. Everything is served to you with just a click and some amount of customization makes your life easier. Earlier for various information you need to go to various website and collect/read data.

One of the finest example of web2.0 ‘personalization tool’ is NetVibes.com and without neglecting the good design and usability. I have been using netvibes.com right from the beginning. Every minute I get fresh news, fresh feeds from the dozens of sites I subscribed at netvibes. This is simply amazing and is getting better and better everyday.

Good practices include making a site easy to use, good search tools, the use of text free of jargon, usability testing and a consideration of design even before the first line of code is written.

Mr. Jakob is already talking about a good web2.0 site. A site, which is easy to use, good search tools, text free jargon, usability and lots more. I vote DIGG.com at this point. A highly used website by millions of users which is so good to use and you don’t have to actually search for anything latest but it gives you the information which is most active, most voted and widely discussed with the registered members. On the usability side they are genius and one can understand this well only after registering with digg.com and using it.

“That was just bad,” he said. “The idea of community, user generated content and more dynamic web pages are not inherently bad in the same way, they should be secondary to the primary things sites should get right.”

“The main criticism or problem is that I do not think these things are as useful as the primary things,” he said.

The primary things of today’s web users is to get the solution, solution which is feasible, accurate, master solution and all this is possible today just by dynamic web pages, community based sites, user generated tools, wherein everybody can be part of this and is well moderated by the owners of web2.0 sites. We just need to look at what we need first and what is more important to us. Nobody here is criticizing with the evolution of web2.0; everyone likes it, learning it and will be using it.

Research suggests that users of a site split into three groups. One that regularly contributes (about 1%); a second that occasionally contributes (about 9%); and a majority who almost never contribute (90%).

“Most people just want to get in, get it and get out,” said Mr. Nielsen. “For them the web is not a goal in itself. It is a tool.”

Talking about demographics and statistics, people who contributes, occasionally contributes and never contributes does not matter at all. If 90% of users do not contribute, they gather the information for which they go online and look out for sites, which provides useful and efficient information. The number of users are growing enormously everyday and making the web2.0 work for them. Most people get in, get in and get out only after they have found a solution. People are getting in every second at web2.0 sites, which are made popular by other users.

Mr Nielsen also questioned championing teenage use of the web as a harbinger of what people will continue to do when they were older.

Come on! Let us be more practical today, people still talking about web2.0 failure and criticizing on this is not and will never make a difference. A lot of people are already talking about web3.0 today. If one has to wait and wait until someone comes and spoon-feeds you about what exactly web2.0 is then…? I don’t have anything more to say.

To conclude:

Is Web 2.0 ‘neglecting good design’? ABSOLUTELY NOT AND I TOTALLY DISAGREE WITH MR.JAKOB NIELSEN.

Web2.0 actually gives the designers a new platform, a new challenge and opportunity by producing the best product/website, which is an integration of Text, Audio, Video, RSS, Ajax, CSS-design, usability, simplicity, wikis, blogs, standardization, mobility and lots more plus a glossy feel, but this is not mandatory.

The good web2.0 sites without neglecting the design element and usability/navigation and are going places:

• Digg.com (Get the highly voted, commented, interesting and fresh news)
• NetVibes.com (Subscribe to your favorite news, rss content)
• Technorati.com (Look out for what live on worldwide web with millions of blog listed)
• SimplyHired.com (Get your relevant job results)
• Hakia.com (Check out the search results, try the word USA)
• Free411.com (radically changing the directory assistance industry)

And, other web2.0 sites with great technology and bad design, purely needs good designers. Could anyone tell me why the most popular site on usability http://www.useit.com/ never thought of facelift? Or is it still holding the basics of web.

Source : http://www.hiteshmehta.in/